Some of the people who most want to end their own lives due to fatal medical conditions can't be helped under the terms of Minnesota's proposed Compassionate Care Act.
But the bill's sponsor, Senator Chris Eaton, DFL-Brooklyn Center, isn't ready to expand the bill's scope.
A listening session on the Compassionate Care Act in Duluth this past weekend revealed something interesting: while some people oppose it on religious grounds, the most dissatisfaction with the proposed law is from people with Alzheimer's or other forms of dementia. The bill would allow people with less than six months to live the freedom to end their own lives, but they must be mentally competent to do so. And for most patients with dementia, their minds give out long before their physical bodies do.
